Suburban pain hard to take in ‘Zenith’
In every true theater lover, there’s a lover of human suffering. It’s not schadenfreude, exactly, not in the sense that the word is normally used. But we incorrigible thespians must have within us some aesthetic or moral need to witness transgression, punishment and affliction. How else to explain “Medea” and “King Lear”?
Yet to see San Francisco Playhouse’s “Zenith,” about affluent suburban families facing enormous pressure to present normalcy, is to absorb pain that brings little pleasure. It’s more catastrophe than tragedy, almost like an earthquake befalling innocents. What satisfaction can we glean when calamity strikes as a force of nature?
Kirsten Greenidge’s play is part of the company’s Sandbox Series, which has charted an intriguing middle ground between full-fledged main stage programming and new play development, as a separate season of world premieres that get full runs in second stages, with minimal production values, so that the company can best assess a script’s next step. (Its acclaimed “Ideation” opened here.)
Director Lauren English tapped into this laudable mission at her curtain speech at the show’s Thursday, Aug. 24, opening at ACT’s Costume Shop, describing the evening as both “the final stage of collaboration” and “the beginning of this play’s life.”
“Zenith” still has a long way to go. It centers on Angela (Atim Udoffia), whose base level of intensity is always several notches above what a situation would seem to require. If that weren’t foreboding enough, her reason for dropping in on her sister-in-law Hazel (Nia Fairweather) during breakfast is downright weird. She demands to take Hazel’s three kids away for the weekend, right now, as if it were her life’s greatest dream, as if the matter were already settled, even though it’s all news to Hazel. One last pummel from the foreshadowing mallet: She keeps talking about knives.
The reasons for Angela’s bulldozing personality, her constant chatter insisting that her life is great and her ultimate breakdown are all boilerplate: She had to grow up too early. As a woman, she has to shoulder all the domestic burdens her husband, Chuck (Adrian Roberts), can shirk simply by asserting that he’s not good at them and has no interest in them. She doesn’t get appreciation or love, yet judgments and demands flood in from her privileged milieu — from the other moms at her kids’ school, from each new alert from her cell. Even crumbs of indulgence — a moms’ night out, a massage you can book on an app — are still further stressors rather than respites.
If the characters were all white, the show would be insufferable. Thankfully, Greenidge and S.F. Playhouse envision “Zenith” in a mostly black world, which helps makes the premise a little bit less of a cliche. Also mitigating are several excellent performances. Sally Dana showcases great range in a variety of bit parts, not just giving each character new tics, but animating each with a richly defined spirit. Udoffia and Fairweather both plumb the depths of pain, spewing feeling with such force that they wail not just for their individual lots in life but for a system that relentlessly chips away at their humanity as women.
It’s the kind of suffering you wish could gratify. But “Zenith” just kicks characters who are already down.